


the impermanence of your dreams

by warsfeil



Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Blindfolds, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:42:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26398855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warsfeil/pseuds/warsfeil
Summary: “Are you awake?” Shigure asks.“Yes,” Akito says, when she finds her voice. Shigure has one hand on her shoulder, but Akito can’t remember him jostling her; everytime she wakes from a dream it feels like he’s pulling her out of it with only his voice.Shigure presses nightmares out of Akito the only way he knows how.
Relationships: Sohma Akito/Sohma Shigure
Comments: 5
Kudos: 52





	the impermanence of your dreams

Akito has nightmares more often than not. 

She can tell they’re nightmares when they start. She’s wearing the wrong clothes, she’s surrounded by the juunishi, by her father, by her mother. The nightmares have her ruin Hatori’s other eye; they have her push Tohru off the cliff and laugh; they have her stabbing Shigure, this time, but in the heart, unwavering. She knows it’s a dream, but knowing doesn’t help when the words she’s trying to shout die in her throat. Her body moves like she’s surrounded by the gravity of a thousand worlds, and she feels the deep-seated terror work its way through her stomach into her chest and spread out.

She forgets it’s a dream, the fear replacing any more rational thoughts she might have. There’s only her, with the body of someone she cares for -- Akito, with her hands bloody again, with something else she’s done and ruined and even worse this time, just like everyone must expect--

“Akito. Come back to me.”

It’s like being splashed with cold water. Akito jerks awake and gasps out an inhale, the scream of the dream turning to a whisper in her mouth as she looks at Shigure in the darkness. There’s a scant bit of moonlight streaming in, and nothing more. It’s enough to see Shigure’s outline.

“Are you awake?” Shigure asks.

“Yes,” Akito says, when she finds her voice. Shigure has one hand on her shoulder, but Akito can’t remember him jostling her; everytime she wakes from a dream it feels like he’s pulling her out of it with only his voice.

“You’ve been having these dreams a lot,” Shigure says. He’s propped up on his elbow, the line of his body a dark shadow.

“Stress,” Akito says. “Hatori said -- it was stress.” He’d said more than that, actually -- he’d offered medicine for it, but Akito had taken it once and only found that it made her nightmares stranger and harder to wake up from. 

“Hmm,” Shigure hums. 

Akito doesn’t know what he’s thinking. She does, sometimes, and it’s getting easier the more time they spend together. It feels like Shigure knows all of her, inside and out, anticipates all of her reactions and words before she says them, and she doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of mastery over Shigure’s internal workings. She’s getting there, though; she understands who he is as a person, she thinks -- that he’s unchanging in his own way, a reed that bends to remain unbroken no matter what storm it must weather. 

“What can I say to help?” Shigure asks, after a moment, and Akito closes her eyes. Shigure’s hand trails up her cheek and rests there, and she turns into it, letting herself drift closer.

“You won’t lie,” Akito says, not unkindly, “so I don’t think there’s anything to say.” She doesn’t _want_ to be lied to, which is a lie in of itself; she wants it more than anything, to be lied to and told that everything will be okay, but she knows the truth of the matter now, knows that she has to keep moving forward even if she wants to be sheltered by lies and platitudes. 

“Then I’ll have to do something,” Shigure says, and leans forward. He kisses Akito, and Akito kisses back. It’s like a command that wipes her mind, and she feels like she may be relying on it too much. She made that step to kiss him, and it felt like it was something important, even back then, with the weight of the curse still dragging through her veins, with the whisper that _he’ll leave, he’ll leave, he’ll leave if you don’t_.

Shigure hasn’t left, of course, but that hasn’t made the fear relent.

Akito doesn’t know if having sex to chase away nightmares is exactly a clinically proven idea, but she won’t say no. She doesn’t think she’ll ever feel like turning him down or pushing him away, not when it feels like so much is making up for lost time. Time she wasted; time she missed.

Shigure shifts, after a moment; he drops himself to bracket her body with an arm on either side of her shoulders, his knee pressing down on the blanket beside her. He kisses across her jaw, down her neck, and Akito tilts her head, giving him more access than he strictly needs. He’s been under orders not to leave marks -- she’s the head of the household and she’s taking it seriously, now, the last thing she needs is the maids going to her mother to gossip about the latest proof that she has a fucking sex life -- but that doesn’t stop him from letting his teeth worry at the skin of her collarbone.

“Shigure,” she says, as much a warning as it is an encouragement, and she feels his lips curve into a smile against her skin.

“Do you want me to stop?” Shigure asks. Akito opens her eyes. She can’t remember when she shut them, actually, but the room is still dim enough that she can only make out his outline where he hovers against her. 

“No,” Akito says. “That wouldn’t be doing something.”

Shigure hums against her skin, a gentle vibration, and then he sits upright. The movement allows a rush of cold air to wash down over Akito in his absence, and she shivers. She see what he’s doing well enough, watching him shrug off the layers of the sleep wear. The night air isn’t chilly enough to bother someone like Shigure, who always looks so untouched by things like weather. He’s above all that, in his own way, and Akito feels like she has to keep a hold on him or he’ll drift away from her again, that even she can’t leave a mark on him in the way she wants to.

She reaches out with the thought, her hands drifting to his hips, fingertips cascading down the muscle of his thighs. 

“Lay back,” Shigure says, and Akito pauses, but does it. It isn’t like she’s ever an inactive participant, regardless of position, but something about it feels different: in the darkness of the room, in the stillness of the night. 

“I want to feel you,” Akito says, and Shigure laughs.

“Oh, you’ll feel me,” Shigure says, stretching back out over her. He reaches down to push her clothing off, the layers falling away like they were never there. It’s chilly, to her, the night air pressing down on her skin, and the more heated she feels the worse the cold seems. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Akito says, and she can feel the automatic frown. It’s still second nature to her, to take exactly what she wants, to lash out the second she doesn’t get it -- she reaches out again, and Shigure catches her wrists and presses them back down to the futon. She doesn’t force him away, allows this with a hitch in her breath and a dull ache in her chest.

“I’m going to tell you to do something,” Shigure says, very calmly, his voice as easy as ever. Now that she’s listening to it, really listening in a way she didn’t for so long, she can hear the extra layers in it: the quiet worry that threads through his words, the delicate undercurrent that speaks to how much he intends to wreak havoc on the people she dreams about, the amusement everytime she falls back on old habits despite herself. “You don’t have to, but I think it’ll help distract you.” 

“The fact that you’re not saying what “it” is makes it seem shady,” Akito says, and Shigure laughs. He moves, for a moment, a gentle rustle of cloth on cloth, and then he’s pressing a layer of fabric over her eyes, the familiar feeling of an obi and the smell of Shigure.

“Hold onto the ends,” Shigure says, pressing it down into her hands. He doesn’t tie it around her head, doesn’t do anything but lay it there and wait. She tightens her grasp on it, rolls the fabric around her fingers. It blocks out what little ambient light there was, renders any vision completely dark. She can still hear Shigure, still feel him; she still knows exactly where he is even without her sight. 

“I couldn’t see you to begin with,” Akito murmurs.

“That wasn’t the point,” Shigure says, and Akito makes an unconvinced noise but doesn’t try to move the fabric away. It’s a strange feeling, to follow someone else’s commands. She’d taken the lead, with Kureno, virtually every time -- she takes the lead with Shigure, sometimes, drops herself into his lap without any thought to the matter and does the job of distracting herself very thoroughly. This is different, though, and she can’t describe exactly how the action of putting something over her eyes seems to be blocking everything out with such finality.

She can feel her heart race. She steadies her breathing, consciously, because there’s no reason to be so worked up so quickly. He’s barely touched her. She isn’t a teenager, she isn’t going to be that easy from one kiss, and yet--

He touches her, and her skin quakes at the touch. 

“Easy,” Shigure murmurs, his fingers across her naked stomach. He slides them up, and Akito has to reorient her breathing again, try to slow it all down. His touch is warm, now, and her skin feels warm, and between the two of them even the air is starting to take on that heat, to press down around them like they’re creating their own localized weather.

“Shigure,” Akito says, almost desperately, because she can’t describe anything she’s feeling right now. Everything is new, and she doesn’t have the words for it, doesn’t have the capability. 

“It’s alright,” Shigure murmurs, and Akito swallows. She doesn’t move -- she can’t, exactly, if she wants to keep hold of the obi like she’s been instructed, and as much as she can’t explain it the last thing she wants to do is refuse to listen right now. Her mind stutters over the concept, remembers that this is all something Shigure has designed to -- allegedly -- distract her from nightmares, and she can’t help but think it’s shockingly effective thus far, the spark of thought dim in the back of her brain.

Shigure presses his lips to her stomach, just above her navel, and Akito can feel her stomach flutter again, every touch a little less anticipated than the last with the simple ease of her sight being removed. He moves up slowly, his lips creating their own path up, his hands slipping up her sides to her ribs, to the curve of her breasts. He wraps his lips around a nipple, and she doesn’t realize she’s stopped breathing until he pulls away.

“Breathe,” he murmurs, the amusement clear in his voice.

She can feel herself flush, because she’s still not used to it; it still feels like he’s laughing at her expense, even if she knows otherwise, now. “I’m breathing,” she says, but her voice cracks in the middle of the words. She starts to shift her head like she’ll look away, and the fabric drags, so she stops the movement before it can get very far and then slowly moves it back to how she was.

“Good girl,” Shigure says, and Akito fervently wishes that such a simple phrase did _not_ affect her so much, because her legs shift involuntarily and her hips move, and Shigure presses his lips back down to suck a mark that will last for days on the side of her breast. 

“That’s--” Akito starts.

“--fair game,” Shigure murmurs, dragging his fingers along the mark. It doesn’t hurt, but she can feel the difference as his fingers cross over it. “Unless there’s someone else that sees you naked on a regular basis.”

“There isn’t,” Akito snaps, and Shigure just laughs again, and she knows that the statement is as much for him as it is for her. They’ve both made mistakes, leading up to this, they’ve both moved circles around the thing that they wanted and left damage behind them. She wonders if that’s why they fit so well together. They’re both terrible people, in their own way; perhaps they were never meant to be with anyone else.

“Then I’ll do what I want,” Shigure says, calmly.

“You’d do that anyway,” Akito says, and then cuts off abruptly when Shigure’s grip on her side leaves the mark of his nails down her ribcage. It isn’t enough to break the skin, not like all the marks she’s left on him over the past several months, but she can feel the red lines raise automatically, her body responding to his touch.

Shigure kisses her again, then, and she tilts her head up into it as much as she can. Her grip on the obi is too tight, and she’s certain her knuckles must be white with the effort of keeping hold on it without ripping it off to wrap her arms around Shigure. Or his throat, with the way things are going, because he breaks the kiss and moves down her body, hooks an arm under her knee so he can kiss the inside of her thigh. 

Akito makes an extremely unflattering gurgling noise, because the inside of her thigh is sensitive when he presses his teeth to it, but she’d rather he apply his lips elsewhere. 

He doesn’t, of course, because Shigure is a jerk, which is, unfortunately, something Akito was aware of before she started dating him, so she supposes she’ll have to continue to live with it.

He keeps kissing across her leg, instead, lets his tongue swing out in the dip of the joint between leg and pelvis, and Akito can’t quite manage to keep her concentration on her hands and on her breathing and on her hips, so she bucks automatically. Shigure presses down with his hand, an easy touch across her stomach that forces her back down into stillness. It’s not a grip she could break so easily, and that knowledge is a binding in its own way -- that he can hold her down and doesn’t, unless she wants it.

She wants it, tonight.

He finally reaches out, drags her down to lift her hips half off the futon, and she fists her hands around the obi until it’s pressed against her head, until her hands can tangle in her own hair just so she has something to hold on to. Shigure’s tongue drifts up, and it’s sparks against her brain, the overwhelming heat. 

It’s a lazy rhythm, but it’s a rhythm nonetheless; it feels superheated at every turn, too hot against her clit when he licks up, and she doesn’t know how it can feel so much hotter when she knows the exact temperature of the human body and knows the science behind it and none of it matters at all.

“Shigure,” she says, but this time it isn’t an objection or a reproach; it’s a praise, falling from her lips in a hitched whisper. Shigure presses in, his tongue pressing inside of her until she arches at the feeling. There’s shocks all the way into her toes everytime he moves his tongue, and it’s a steadily rising crescendo that blocks almost everything, everything but the feel of his hair across her thighs and the futon underneath her.

He pulls away before she comes, which she’d normally expect, but it feels like a cold shock when she’s already this worked up.

“Don’t worry,” Shigure says. He kisses her, and she can taste herself on his tongue, but she doesn’t bother to object to it. “I wouldn’t leave you like that.”

Akito considers objecting, but for all that Shigure can be a cruel and selfish person when he wants, he’s never left her unsatisfied. Not once, not even in the midst of their attempts to sabotage each other as best they could. 

“Hnn,” Akito says, instead. She resettles the blindfold, trying to let her grip relax. She can feel the strain in her wrists, and the cloth is slightly damp from how hard she’s been clutching it. 

Shigure doesn’t give much of a warning: he hikes one of her legs back up, and it’s only muscle memory that has her arching up when he presses inside her. 

Akito has never been a particularly loud participant in sex -- she doesn’t see the point, and sound can travel further than one might think even in her secluded area of the estate -- but she still lets her back arch, lets her breath fall with more volume than in might normally, something like a groan tearing itself out of her chest without her conscious thought. 

Shigure sinks into her completely, and she wraps her legs around him, tries to pull him in even further, tries to get even closer.

“You let go,” Shigure says, amusement in his voice, and Akito realizes with dim awareness that she has. She’d let go to reach up, to wrap her arms around Shigure, to tangle a hand in his hair and leave her mark on his back, scratch out her own possession in the most undeniable way she can.

“I did,” Akito says, because she won’t deny it when the truth is obvious, but she isn’t going to apologize for it, either. She’d rather be touching Shigure. 

“Well,” Shigure says, shifting her weight so he can get a better position, “you tried.”

“Shut up,” Akito says, as primly as if she was giving a normal command. She doesn’t really give many orders, anymore, but it doesn’t matter, because Shigure has never followed them anyway. It doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t say anything so much as laugh into her neck, hips canting up into a thrust that makes any retort so might have had drift straight out of her mind like it was never even there.

Shigure’s pace tends to be merciless, and it’s no different now. Akito is so keyed up that she meets him at every turn, feels the stretch of him inside of her and the way they fit together. She holds onto him almost desperately, and he wraps an arm around her. He presses his lips to her neck, but his breathing is hitched, too. He groans into the junction of her throat and shoulder, and the idea of not leaving any marks goes out of her head entirely. 

Akito can’t manage anything as coherent as Shigure’s name; she just chokes a vague noise out when she clenches down, hips jerking. She can feel it like a string drawing her entire body taut, and she can’t even find the space to breathe for fear of losing the feel of it, the hot flood of pleasure through every nerve ending in her body. She can feel it when it hits Shigure; he bites down on her shoulder, grips her hard enough that she feels like she might break apart in his grasp. 

She doesn’t come down easy. She never does; she hangs there too long in the aftermath, breath like fire in her lungs and her mind stalled out to a crawl. Shigure lowers her back down to the futon, and she allows this until he tries to move away.

“We should clean up,” Shigure murmurs, but Akito laces their fingers and looks at their hands after she does so.

“No,” Akito murmurs, because she doesn’t want to let go for a moment, not now. Not when everything in her mind is quiet and she feels this warm, this wanted. 

“I can’t say that I mind,” Shigure says, and lays down next to her, instead, “but you can’t get mad at me in the morning.”

Akito doesn’t make any promises. She just reaches out her other hand to drag his arm securely around her, slides until her back is against his chest and she can feel all the residual heat leech carefully into her skin.

“Sleep well,” Shigure says, and presses a kiss to her temple.

She does.

**Author's Note:**

> alternative title: "you've got to use your healing dick, shigure"
> 
> anyway, who thought 2020 would be the year i write het? i'm as surprised as you are! you can find me @warsfeils on twitter to yell about akito sohma with me, thanks.


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